1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates generally to detecting and correcting errors associated with data stored in memory devices. In particular, the present disclosure is related to improving the energy efficiency associated with decoding codewords expected to have varying amounts of errors.
2. Description of the Related Art
To write data within a memory component, such as a NAND memory cell, of a memory device, the memory device generally employs a program/erase (P/E) cycle to write the data. The P/E cycle generally involves erasing existing data that is currently stored in the memory component and then writing new data into the respective memory component. Although these memory devices may store and access data in a timely manner, the integrity of the data stored in the devices may become less reliable after executing a certain number of P/E cycles. That is, each P/E cycle may cause a small amount of physical damage to the medium (e.g., memory component) used to store the data. As such, the memory device may have a limited number of PIE cycles before the data stored on a respective device is unreliable.
The reliability of the memory device may be quantified by raw bit error rates (RBERs). Since memory devices increasingly employ small memory cell geometries, which may have severe noise and disturb mechanisms, the end-of-life RBERs of the memory devices are relatively large as compared to the beginning-of-life RBERs of the respective memory devices. To ensure that the data read from the memory cells are error-free, the memory device may use powerful error correction codes (ECCs) to correct errors that may exist. Although the powerful ECCs may correct bit errors in the data, using powerful ECCs throughout the life of the memory device may be an inefficient way to detect and correct the errors in the data. Accordingly, improved methods for detecting and correcting errors in data stored in various types of memory devices are desirable.